MEDAL REVIEW FOR MARINE KILLED IN IRAQ ADVANCES

The case for a posthumous Medal of Honor for a San Diego Marine killed in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004 has landed on the desk of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, said he spoke to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus last week about the medal upgrade for Sgt. Rafael Peralta, 25, who reportedly scooped a grenade under his body to save fellow Marines.

“The fact that it even went up to the SecDef means that there was new stuff,” Hunter said Thursday. “I think otherwise the Navy would have turned it down.”

A spokeswoman for Mabus said only that the medal review is ongoing and that it wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate on the outcome.

Hunter, a Marine officer who served in Fallujah around the same year as Peralta, has helped lead the campaign to upgrade the sergeant’s award.

Peralta was nominated by the Marine Corps for the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition for combat valor, but was awarded the Navy Cross after a Pentagon panel determined that he was too wounded to have deliberately chosen to absorb the grenade blast.

The decision, announced in 2008, was controversial because it contradicted the eyewitness testimony of Marines involved. Peralta’s family has refused to accept the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest combat award.

Earlier this year, the entire San Diego congressional delegation signed a letter to Mabus asking him to reopen the case because of new evidence.

The new material was a report from an independent pathologist who said that despite being previously wounded by a bullet to the back of the head, Peralta could have knowingly pulled the grenade under his body.

Additionally, videos of the incident surfaced.

In order for the process to continue, Panetta would have to reverse the decision of his predecessor, Robert Gates. President Barack Obama has the final word on Medal of Honor determinations.